Movie Night

For Steve’s birthday, I got a babysitter (thanks, Mom and Dad), made reservations at a nice restaurant near a local airport (the filet mignon was wonderful, but I wouldn’t recommend the blueberry cobbler). Then we went to the movies. We LOVE the movies. Before we had kids, we went to the movies a few times each month. It is the one thing that I truly missed when we had Kate (okay…I actually missed sleeping the most…oh, and having a skinny body – I still miss that, but going to the movies comes in a close third). I love everything about the movie theatre. I love the smell of stale popcorn, the creaky seats, the sticky, soda covered floors. I love sitting in the dark beside Steve, sharing popcorn, and getting lost in the big screen for an hour or two.

We went to see The Hangover (Steve’s choice because it was his birthday. I definitely wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re a college frat boy at heart. Oh, and just a quick warning that the credits are very vulgar – definitely caught me off-guard, being as naïve and innocent as I am). Anyway, we were having a great birthday “date night” that very quickly went downhill.

The theatre was packed, but there was enough room for “personal spacing” (you know, an empty seat between strangers). So, there was an empty seat beside Steve and two empty seats beside me. More than half way into the movie, two people came in; one sat beside Steve and the other sat beside me. It seemed strange that they didn’t take the two seats together next to me and I'm not sure why they joined us in the middle of the movie, but whatever. Then, the girl that sat beside me got a phone call and she started talking. I thought she was going to get off right away, but it was her mom and she proceeded to have a normal conversation with her. Steve leaned over and said, “Are you going to talk on your phone?” and she said yes. I asked her to take her phone call outside, which she did (but she was quite huffy about it). Can you believe that? Oh…but it gets worse.

About fifteen minutes later, she came back, this time with her very large, very mad boyfriend. The movie was about over by this time. They both sat down next to me (he was taking over my armrest and just being rude). As soon as he sat down, he leaned over to Steve and said, “Do you have something to say to my girlfriend?” Steve just looked at him and said no. Then he said, “Then why did you yell at her earlier?” I said that we just asked her to take her phone call outside because we couldn’t hear the movie. Then his phone rang and he took the call and started talking. Can you believe that? Ughhh…I was so mad. I have to say that I didn’t act like a very good Christian. I keep asking myself what Jesus would have done and I think the answer is show love and compassion, forgiveness and understanding. Steve thinks that Jesus would have put the guy in his place, though I suspect not. Well, here’s what I did. I took my elbow and shoved his arm off of MY armrest. When he looked at me (with his stupid phone up to his ear), I called him a nasty name. Really…I did – a three letter name that starts with an a and has two s’s in it. Yeah. Not what Jesus would do, I know. I was just so angry that this guy had the nerve to be so rude. It took every ounce of restraint to keep from grabbing that phone and throwing it across the theatre.

The sad thing is that I still feel guilty about the whole thing. Why should I feel guilty when they were the rude ones? I don’t know. I just feel sad that I didn’t handle it better. I’m not exactly sure what the right response would have been, but I doubt that I hit the mark with my nasty comment.

The guy gave us some very mean looks when we were leaving the theatre, but Steve and I ignored him and left. Then, I was convinced that he was following us home, so I made Steve take some unusual roads and turns to our house. The car behind us stayed right behind us, and just as I was convinced that we were going to be shot by the cell phone stalker, the car turned off and we made it home safely. What an ending to Steve’s birthday date.

So what would you have done? Just curious.